Just Because Karen Read Was Found Not Guilty of Murder by a Jury of Her Peer a Year Ago Didn't Stop Boston Magazine From Running a Brutal Hit Piece on Her

Boston Globe. Getty Images.

"People should know when they are conquered." - Quintus, Gladiator

As I've said before, I assumed the Karen Read story was not going to go away any time soon. When the Masshole Trial of the Century comes along, ends the careers of public officials and law enforcement officers, and casts doubt and suspicion on how business is done in the Commonwealth, it's going to have legs. 

Whether or not Odysseus himself is involved in making it a movie:

… The Karen Read case has gone far beyond Massachusetts, it’s become a international story about justice, accountability, and public scrutiny. This is definitely one to watch. 

One thing I definitely did not have money on in the predictions markets is a 10,000 or so word hatchet job on Read appearing in John Henry and Linda Pizzuti's magazine more than a year after Read was acquitted by a jury of all charges. 

For those of you who don't know, Boston is a monthly publication that used to have some influence back when magazines were still relevant. At least among the sorts of people who want to read gripping content like "Where to Find the Best Dim Sum in Brookline," "Is Wellness Culture Ruining Social Fun?" or "Welcome to a Gentler, Friendlier, More Inclusive World of Tennis." Now it exists only to occupy space on the table in your dentist's waiting room, undisturbed among all the patients answering texts until the hygenist calls their names. 

But Boston decided to go full Journo on this one citizen who is, in the eyes of the law, innocent of the crime for which she was charged, tried twice, resulting in a hung jury (that according to some jurors in that trial, had found her Not Guilty of the homicide charge) and acquitted by the other. And this one would appear to be personal, as the reporter who authored it was not the least bit shy about using the first person singular pronouns. 

I'll try to give you the SparkNotes version of Gretchen Voss's attack job. But to mangle a phrase from Maria Von Trapp, let's start at the very ending. A very good place to start. At least in this case. In which her editors scrambled to undo a lot of the damage done to their dying publication with corrections to the things she get wrong:

Source -  Update: This story has been updated to accurately reflect that Aidan Kearney’s phone extraction became public via his now-former girlfriend. The story has also been updated to remove any ambiguity about the context of a message from defense attorney David Yannetti to Kearney. When Yannetti wrote, “These bastards deserve all the scorn we are giving them,” he was referring to the Massachusetts State Police.

In short, this article is a long, protracted, slog that seems intended to settle old scores on behalf of Voss and witnesses involved in the case. Some of whom are suing Read and Kearney, the one known as Turtleboy who was the central figure in making the public aware of this case.

After Read was indicted for manslaughter, and then second-degree murder in 2022, she maintained her innocence, claiming that the people inside the house where she dropped O’Keefe off—Brian Albert, his nephew Colin, and O’Keefe’s close friend McCabe—were the ones responsible for his death. She argued they were able to cover it up thanks to a conspiracy involving dozens of people, including officials from the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office, the Massachusetts State Police, Canton police, first responders, and expert witnesses. Kearney was the first to report this alternative theory, raising questions about what had, until then, been seen as an open-and-shut case—at least on the manslaughter charge.

Kearney’s coverage …  spread across Massachusetts and beyond. Fueled by a quasi-religious fervor, the movement cast the witnesses as villains and public enemies, accusing them of framing an innocent woman to evade justice.

None of the witnesses was ever charged with a crime. But the rage unleashed against them irrevocably altered their lives.

I'll skip way ahead here. Because if you're an adult human who spends more than 30 seconds a day online, you know where this is going. Threats were sent. Hostile messages. Vile content. All of which I have no doubt is true. And terrible. For the internet is dark, and full of terrors. I'll just add that I'm sure Read and Turtleboy's DMs haven't been all filled with unicorns, buttercups, sunshine, lollipops and rainbows either. People are horrible. They're extra strength horrible behind the anonymity of shitposting others. No one deserves it, but that's what happens when you step into the Thunderdome that is social media. 

Moving on:

What few people know, though, is that the harassment of the witnesses—and anyone who dared to question Read’s defense, including this reporter, who has covered the case since its early days—was in fact orchestrated by Read herself and, at times, coordinated with her defense team.

It's not all about you, Gretchen. But sure. Let's play the game. The defendant and her defense team coordinated with a blogger who was very publicly defended her in order to help her defense. I'm no Journo. Nor am I a lawyer. Or a historian. But I think what she's objecting to here - in paragraph after lengthy paragraph - has been going on since Charles I was being tried for treason during the British Civil War. And since his head wound up in a basket, fat lot of good the pro-royalist coverage he got in 

Mercurius Pragmaticus did for him. I just don't see where either Read or Kearney did anything illegal or unethical by communicating. 

What Voss does get into, and it's a point I made throughout both trials, is the witnesses being confronted at their kids' games, protests outside their houses, harrassed while they're out having dinner, and so on. When you do that, you don't speak for me. The reason we have courts is precisely to settle matters without all that going on. No matter how innocent or guilty you think the accused is, they get their day in court. To handle you business any other way is, frankly unAmerican. I dearly love people whose son was murdered in a random, senseless act of violence. They let the process play out, and got the closest thing to justice they could in this imperfect world. If they can be civilized about it, we all can. Thanks for listening to my TEDTalk.

Advertisement

Then she gets into the federal investigation into the Read investigation:

“It’s been reported that the federal authorities have now gotten involved in the circumstances surrounding this case and have empaneled a federal grand jury to investigate some of these circumstances,” Jackson announced to the court. Then, raising his voice for dramatic effect, he added, “Karen Read should not have to wait for the feds to figure out which heads should roll.” Jackson was able to speak about federal involvement and the grand jury in open court, and have it entered into the public record, because it had already been reported by Turtleboy. In a later court filing opposing a proposed gag order, Yannetti argued that Jackson had merely been “reiterating what had already been publicly reported”—not, he said, revealing anything about the grand jury being empaneled, “something about which the defense team would have no knowledge.” What Yannetti did not add is that it had been reported because his team had leaked it to Kearney.

There's a lot more in here about how Colin and Brian Albert were both dragged before a Grand Jury without a lawyer to represent them, and harangued by federal prosecutors about whether or not they were involved in John O'Keefe's death. Which leaves out a few key points. One, that no one is allowed in a Grand Jury except the prosecutors, judge, the witness, and (duh) the grand jurors. Two, being asked questions like that under oath are what goes on in those proceedings, and no charges were filed against them. And three - the biggie she just skipped over with no context - there WAS a federal probe into the Mass. State Police and the Norfolk DA's office. Over the murder of Sandra Birchmore and the (alleged) subsequent coverup:

I don't know. But if I was going to try and cast doubts as to whether Karen Read's legal team was right to publicly disclose a literal federal case about an investigation into the same MSP and the same DA's Office, I'd have found space to mention they covered up a murder in order to protect a cop from Stoughton, which is right next to Canton, where O'Keefe was killed. And that the state's forensics crew who handled Read's case claims to have missed 30,000 texts between Birchmore and the cop who now stands accused, Matthew Farwell, whose baby she was carrying. 

But that's just one of many stubborn facts Voss's article skips. For example, she says Turtleboy published a photo of Colin Albert "at a wedding." Without adding the color that the wedding was of disgraced lead investigator Michael Proctor's sister. That Albert was her ringbearer. And Proctor himself is in the wedding party. Meaning that the moment Proctor rolled up and found the crime scene was the front lawn of someone he was that close to, there was no excuse not to conflict himself out and hand it over to someone else from the department. 

No excuse that is, other than to see to it no one in the Albert house was suspected. And he would've succeeded had it not been for Read's lawyers, Turtleboy, and the Free Karen Read movement. 

But while we're onto things she conveniently left out of this hatchet job:

--The mutual buttdials between Brian Albert and ATF agent Brian Higgins at 2:30 that morning. After which Higgins went to his office at the Canton PD and had access to the vehicle that allegedly struck O'Keefe.

Advertisement

--The reversed image of Read's SUV in the sally port. 

--The fact both guys later destroyed their phones.

--The fact Jen McCabe Googled "Hos long to die in cold."

--The fact the EMT who responded to the scene said under oath she barely knows the Albert's daughter Caitlin, despite dozens of photos of them together. At beaches, pools, bachelorette parties an Spring Break.

--The scratch marks all up and down O'Keefe's arm, and the subsequent disappearance of the Albert's dog, Chloe.

--The absolute clown show that was the MSP's "expert" forensic witnesses, one after another.

--The fact no one on Proctor's team ever spoke to anyone in the house, and no one in the house came outside to ask why there were nine or ten emergency vehicles parked outside their house, lights flashing. 

--And the fact that the federal investigation revealed Proctor's practice of trashing the only suspect he ever considered. 

I could do this all day, but that would just be belaboring the point more than I already have. Instead, I'll let Read's own counsel have the last words. He gets billable hours for this. I'm on straight salary and have other topics to get to:

… NEVER have to issue a correction.  If someone takes issue with an article but the publisher has an out because there was some ambiguity, a publisher will take that “out” and do anything to avoid having to publish a correction.   

Issuing a correction is a black eye to the reporter, certainly.  It signals to future editors that she cannot be trusted.  But it is also embarrassing to the editors and the publisher, who are forced to admit that they failed at their jobs as well.   

So now we come to @GretchenVoss64’s agenda-driven hit piece in @BostonMagazine.  People ask why someone would not grant an interview to a reporter like her.  You don’t grant someone like that an interview because you would be giving an untrustworthy person control over your words. She’s not seeking the truth, she’s advancing her own narrative, irrespective of (and often contrary to) the truth.  And given her lack of ethics, she will take a quote from you and publish it out of context to make it appear as though you said something that you didn’t.  To try to make you look bad to advance her agenda. 

As an aside, those dangers are exactly why any criminal defense attorney will advise a client never to speak to the police. 

I chose not to speak with @GretchenVoss6 because I knew her to be untrustworthy. And sure enough, she was so blinded by her own bias that she took an old quote of mine out of context and made it appear as though I said something that I didn’t.  In the process, of course, she unwittingly proved what her intentions would have been had I agreed to speak with her in the first place.  And by doing so, she put her magazine in legal jeopardy.  Shame on her. 

You can bet that when @BostonMagazine received my demand for a correction, they panicked. They consulted with their legal department, who advised them that there was no “out.”  They recognized that it was one of the strongest defamation claims that could exist, because @GretchenVoss64 acted with actual malice and there was zero defense to what she did.  They were loathe to do it but they had no choice.  They issued the correction and hoped that would put the issue to bed. 

I’m told, however, that the print edition still exists.  I haven’t decided yet whether to take any further action regarding that clear defamation. In addition, there are many other inaccuracies in her “article” (although I will likely leave it to others to demand those corrections).  For now, it is just satisfying — once again — to have exposed corruption. 

Well said. I guess now all their is to do is ask Henry and Pizzuti to do better. But we all know what a waste of time that is. 

Peter Byrne - PA Images. Getty Images.